Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Green Beans

Pickled green beans preserved in a vinegar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Green Beans

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the beans

  1. Pick tender string beans and leave them whole.

  2. Soak beans in a brine of 1 pound salt and ½ gallon water for 2 weeks, stirring daily and changing the water after 1 day.

  3. Line a pickling kettle with vine leaves, add the beans, and sprinkle with ½ teaspoon powdered alum for every gallon of water.

  4. Boil until the beans are bright green, then remove the leaves and transfer the beans to cold water.

Make and pour the pickle

  1. In a separate pot, combine 1 gallon vinegar, 1 teacup sugar, 36 peppercorns, 1 ounce cloves, 1 ounce allspice, and 12 blades of mace; boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Place the beans in a stone jar and pour the hot vinegar mixture over them, covering closely.

  3. Scald the vinegar again and pour it over the beans for 2 days, repeating this process 3 times.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salt
Draws water out of the beans and seasons them during the long brine soak.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the beans and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Powdered alum
Helps the beans stay firm and crisp through soaking and boiling.

The step that matters

Boiling the beans until bright green. Boiling too briefly leaves the beans dull and raw-tasting, while overcooking softens their texture. Removing the leaves and cooling the beans promptly keeps them crisp and green.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes